Case Study: Tacoma Housing Authority Gets the First Comprehensive Salesforce Housing Solution

Client Background

Established in 1940, Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) is a housing and supportive services provider focused on helping the community of Tacoma, Washington develop and prosper equitably by delivering high-quality sustainable housing and support services to people in need.

THA develops and manages real estate and provides affordable rental housing by offering roughly 1,400 dwelling units throughout the city as well as rent assistance to over 4,000 households. Altogether THA serves a total of about 12,000 individuals, the majority of whom are elderly, disabled or children.

Business Challenges

Tacoma Housing Authority was working in an environment with multiple legacy systems and a significant paper-based process. Duplicate data entry was the norm and it was not uncommon for data to be entered 3 to 5 times by the time a process was completed. THA required a consolidation of systems, an automation of paper processes, and a re-work of business processes. Being a public agency, data integrity and security had been challenges in the past and were key to whatever solution was implemented.

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The goal of the agency’s investment in Salesforce is to increase productivity and efficiency by eliminating duplication of work, increasing transparency in reporting and data collection, and consolidating and relating data points across the agency. Efficiencies gained will enable THA to focus on functions that prove a higher value for its clients and to be nimbler as budgets get tighter.” 

 – Todd Craven, Director of Administration, Tacoma Housing Authority

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What We Did

• Partnered with THA to design and implement a Salesforce platform based solution that replaced and unified multiple tools

• Created nearly 300 customized processes via Process Builder and Visual Workflow

• Ensured compliance with HUD (50058) and state reporting

• Developed a Housing Accelerator to facilitate faster design and deployment for all PHAs

Key projects completed by EightCloud: 

• Designed comprehensive solution that included custom development of Tenant Management, Waitlist Management, Property management, Inspections Mobile App, User Interfaces, Email to Ticket functionality, Calendar Interface and more

• Integrated Salesforce with THA’s cloud-based accounting system, Intacct, as well as existing marketing email solution and form collection tool

• Implemented a custom integrated Salesforce / ShareFile solution to provide document management that was compliant with the various regulations that THA must abide by as a public agency

• Designed a Community Case Management Solution to facilitate citizen engagement, assessments, goal tracking and referrals

• Designed and implemented a solution that utilized Salesforce configuration and custom integration to enable THA to share data with Washington State Housing and Finance Commission’s Web-Based Annual Reporting System (WBARS)

Results

Replacing paper processes saves significant time and energy. Data now must only be entered once, instead of up to 5 times, which greatly increases the data quality while conserving valuable staff time. Processes have been standardized and made visible, allowing management to quickly see the current state of each process and take corrective action.

A major leap forward in client service quality and process effectiveness. This new system spans all major functional areas of the THA. These include waitlist management, processing rent calculations and charges, rent collection, accounts payable bills, Section 8 accounting, contract management, risk management, project management, document management, purchasing, inventory, maintenance and work orders, insurance claim processing, reasonable accommodations, case management, and unit inspections. 

Tacoma Housing Authority utilizes both the desktop and mobile functionality of Salesforce. This enables inspectors and maintenance technicians to efficiently complete inspections and work orders in the field.

WBARS integration tool saved THA at least 108 hours per year, hundreds of errors and rework. Automating data collection and entry drastically reduced the time it took workers to manually generate data and reports for hundreds of households consisting of 50 data points each.

 

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